2023's top stories across 5COUNTRY

Days after Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders called a special legislative session to review rules related to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), documents came to light revealing the purchase of a lectern for $19,000. 

Since September, when the special session was called, skepticism and controversy surrounding the purchase have only escalated, as an audit of the governor's office is set to continue into 2024. Gov. Sanders says she welcomes the outcome of the audit but refuses to publicly use the lectern, as the media would "talk about nothing else" if she did.

In April, a Sam's Club gas station in Fayetteville had a fuel mix-up that left customers with serious car issues. 

One man said he got gas for his SUV at the station on a Friday night and when he woke up on Saturday, "it wouldn't go anywhere, it would just start up die." Needing to work seven days a week, the man went out that day and bought a new truck, but when he got gas for that truck (at the same Sam's Club gas station) on Sunday, he was hit with car troubles again.

When 5NEWS followed up with the man over six months later, he said he still had not been fully reimbursed by the Sam's Club gas station.

In August, a family of three said that their vacation at Devil's Den State Park turned into a nightmare when they woke up "in the middle of the night, itching and miserable."

Officials say all campers in that area have been treated for bedbugs after the incident, and the family has been refunded for the cost of their cabin rental. Still, the family's belongings are considered a total loss.

As for the family, they say their discomfort from the bites lasted a few weeks, and they’re hopeful it won't happen to anyone else.

In June, a prehistoric site was found during a pre-project survey of a Highway 112 expansion project.

Commonwealth Heritage Group Senior Archeologist Jack Rossen says this is the most significant archaeological site he has seen in Arkansas, estimated to be between 6,000 and 9,000 years old.

A Rogers mother and daughter found themselves in crisis mode after an effort to clear out extra clothes ended with the accidental donation of the daughter's wedding dress.

Nicole Dobson and her daughter Bailey found no other option but to ask for the public's help, and the story of its miraculous discovery made headlines across Arkansas!

Dr. Brian Hyatt, a former Arkansas State Medical Board chairman and former head of the behavioral health unit at Northwest Medical Center in Springdale, is facing almost 60 civil lawsuits from former patients, and two counts of Medicaid fraud after allegedly keeping patients against their will, and not treating them.

The many accusations against Dr. Hyatt accuse him of criminal negligence against his patients, and the federal investigation against him states that, among other things, he billed his patients at the highest possible Medicaid code over 99% of the time, when the national average is around 21%.

Crawford County deputies who were seen on video hitting a beating up a man outside of a Mulberry gas station in August 2022 were arrested by the FBI in January 2023.

The video shows the deputies, along with a Mulberry police officer, seemingly sitting on top of the man they were trying to arrest, hitting and kicking him while he was on the ground.

Furthermore, FBI officials said just a few hours before one of the deputies' department-issued iPhones was seized, he "performed a factory reset that erased all data."

7 Brew and Jimmy John Liautaud, the founder of Jimmy John’s, have been battling in back-to-back civil suits against one another in court. The long and complicated lawsuits tell a story of conflicting ideas about what a partnership would look like, with both sides alleging they were taken advantage of.

5NEWS Chief Meteorologist Matt Standridge gets a section all to himself because of his incredible work bringing news about the weather to viewers and readers in an understandable way while also showcasing that spark of silliness he carries with him everywhere.

Way back in February, when interest in the Chinese Balloon that flew across the U.S. was at its peak, Matt wrote up an article investigating exactly where it was headed. Using weather data and meteorological techniques, Matt explained how the balloon hovered at 60,000 feet over the U.S. until it was shot down over the coast of South Carolina in early February.

A few months later in June, Matt taught us how to get more lightning bugs and fireflies to hang out in the backyard during the summer. Not only did he give step-by-step instructions on how to acquire the critters, but he also finally put to bed the old conflict between calling them "lightning bugs" or "fireflies."

In October, Matt went out to the site of a suspected meteorite landing that left one family with a fiery hole in their deck and a lot of questions. Could a meteorite punch through the deck and spark a fire?

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